ortune, and to have nothing
left but literary honour!"

Vaugelas, the most polished writer of the French language, who devoted
thirty years to his translation of Quintus Curtius, (a circumstance
which modern translators can have no conception of), died possessed of
nothing valuable but his precious manuscripts. This ingenious scholar
left his corpse to the surgeons, for the benefit of his creditors!

Louis the Fourteenth honoured Racine and Boileau with a private monthly
audience. One day the king asked what there was new in the literary
world. Racine answered, that he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the
house of Corneille, whom he found dying, deprived even of a little
broth! The king preserved a profound silence; and sent the dying poet a
sum of money.

Dryden, for less than three hundred pounds, sold Tonson ten thousand
verses, as may be seen by the agreement.

Purchas, who in the reign of our first James, had spent his life in
compiling his _Relation of the World_, when he gave it to the public,
for the reward of his labours was thrown into prison, at the suit of his
printer. Yet this was the book which, he informs Charles I. in his
dedication, his father read every night with great profit and
satisfaction.

The Marquis of Worcester, in a petition to parliament, in the reign of
Charles II., offered to publish the hundred processes and machines,
enumerated in his very curious "Centenary of Inventions," on condition
that money should be granted to extricate him from the _difficulties in
which he had involved himself by the prosecution of useful discoveries_.
The petition does not appear to have been attended to! Many of these
admirable inventions were lost. The _steam-engine_ and the _telegraph_,
may be traced among them.

It appears by the Harleian MS. 7524, that Rushworth, the author of the
"Historical Collections," passed the last years of his life in gaol,
where indeed he died. After the Restoration, when he presented to the
king several of the privy council's books, which he had preserved from
ruin, he received for his only reward the _thanks of his majesty_.

Rymer, the collector of the Foedera, must have been sadly reduced, by
the following letter, I found addressed by Peter le Neve, Norroy, to the
Earl of Oxford.

"I am desired by Mr. Rymer, historiographer, to lay before your lordship
the circumstances of his affairs. He was forced some years back to part
with all his choice printed books to subs